Caring for Relatives or Friends with Treatment-Resistant Depression Takes Its Toll

Family members and friends who care for individuals with mental illness (informal caregivers) show high levels of distress, anxiety, and depression. Most prior studies have focused on caregivers for persons with dementia or schizophrenia. Researchers in the U.K. recently compared 35 informal caregivers for patients with chronic, treatment-resistant depression to 23 noncaregiver controls recruited from a volunteer database.

The patients, part of an ongoing follow-up study, had been discharged from 1 to 7 years earlier (median, 3 years) after a hospitalization for depression (mean illness duration, 22 years; mean previous psychiatric hospitalizations, 6; median antidepressant trials, 6; 53% had attempted suicide). Of the caregivers (mean age, …